


You're Shakespeare and English Isn't My First Language

by thel9stwea699



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Comfort/Angst, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 07:58:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4093125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thel9stwea699/pseuds/thel9stwea699
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I would like to state here that I'm hoping to flesh this out into my first multi-chapter work, so more characters and ships may be added as I update chapters.</p><p>Essentially, this is just some good, ol' fashioned, humanstuck angst/comfort. I'm a sucker for sappy backstory and romantic build-up, so that's what I hope to achieve here.</p><p>I'd also like to apologize for the chapters being so short; I jump around from event to event in my stories, and -as I stated earlier- this is my first attempt at writing a multi-chapter fanfic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

At first it was nice –Horuss would come over, eat with the Nitrams, they’d all chat and be merry- but slowly that was beginning to be replaced by a kind of ambiguous tension. Week by week it amplified, nearly becoming tangible –like a chord one could pluck, sending reverberations off to strike the walls and come bouncing back. Chatty dinners receded into long stretches of silence, only ever penetrated by the sound of a fork scraping against a porcelain plate. 

Horuss had been welcomed with wide arms and smiling faces into the Nitram household, but it was becoming apparent that Rufioh was never on the receiving end of the same warmth. Not once did the Sagittarius beckon the latino past the front doors of his home; he never gave any sign that he’d entertained the idea of letting Rufioh meet his family. Did they even know about him? Was Rufioh a name that had ever fallen on the wealthy family’s ears?

It was eating away at Summoner, like a crow pecking at his guts. Why had he never met this blue-eyed boy’s parents? Why was he not invited to come shake hands with his father, to laugh over dinner with him and lovingly tease their sons? A sneaking suspicion was nourishing itself from his mind’s doubts, growing darker every time Horuss sat at the other end of the table, head low and eyes focused only on the plate before him.

Horuss was ashamed –probably embarrassed, too. He’d come from a wealthy, white family; how could he bring home this pretty, but low-class latino boy? Summoner bristled at the thought. How fucking /dare/ he be embarrassed about Rufioh? He couldn’t take the thought of his son being nothing more than this gringo’s dirty, little secret.

 

It ended with confrontation. Horuss could only stare with those big, blue eyes, shaking, as Summoner glared him down, like a wolf pinning a sheep with its eyes. “How come I’ve never met your parents? Every time I bring it up, it’s some new bullshit excuse. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever heard Rufioh mention meeting them, either.” His voice was hard and cold. Rufioh tried to interject, but his father shut him down with just a look.  
“Why are you so ashamed of him? Tell me where the fuck you think you have the right to hold him when you can’t even say his name in your house! What? Is he not a pretty enough pet for Daddy to approve?!” He stood up and Horuss wilted in his chair. “You know what? Just get out. Get the fuck out. I don’t want to see you anywhere near my fucking house again.” Rufioh was trembling, tears staining his brown cheeks, damning himself for not being able to move or to speak up.

 

Guilt hung heavy in Rufioh’s stomach, -he’d apologized several times for his father’s outburst- but he was glad, in the most awful of ways, that it was over. At points in their relationship, he’d actually blamed himself for not being good enough, for not being someone Horuss was proud to talk to his family about, but now he was slowly starting to realize that the Zahhaks had problems he wasn’t a part of. He didn’t want to become part of them, either. No longer did he have to intimately know what a ‘fair-weather-friend’ was, and that was starting to let him breathe easier as the weeks post break-up rolled into months.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a some mild, domestic fluff.

Kankri was, at best, a difficult soul for the majority to get along with. He was awkward, didn’t really /get/ how to talk to people, could be kind of rude, and was incredibly set in his own ways. On the flip side, he was incredibly smart, confident, and didn’t take any shit. As a tutor, he had the pace set far too high for Rufioh to effectively keep up, but damn if he didn’t know his stuff. Additionally, -while it could either be taken as a positive or a negative thing- the cancer couldn’t be swayed to let his student slack off… like, ever.

A paper would be handed over to the pale boy and ten minutes later Rufioh would get it back, a barbed wire fence of red pen marks for him to haul his sorry, non-native speaking ass over. Fix the mistakes, re-read, hand it back over again, rinse, repeat. The latino would say it sucked ass, but he knew what sucking ass was actually like and this was significantly worse than that. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the help –hell, he’d asked for it- but there was something incredibly discouraging about all those circles, underlines, and subtly condescending notes squished into the margins.

He knew it wasn’t all bad, and that it could be far worse; when Rufioh was working, Kankri had the decency not to distract him. In fact, it was kind of weird how uncharacteristically quiet and content he could be to simply sit and read a book while the Taurus sat, or laid in some cases, a foot or two away, re-typing essays or trying in vain to make sense of his reading assignments. It was that companionable quiet that made the situation a little less crummy.

 

Rufioh watched his English grade slowly improve, and he was happy to keep Kankri informed about how he was doing now. Kankri… wasn’t typically as excited as the taller male might hope for, but he did seem pleased by the progress. Then again, it was hard to get the Cancer outwardly excited about anything; that solemn façade was pretty damn hard to breach.

The paler boy sometimes laughed, and it was over the most unexpected things; those occasions were the best. Rufioh would just off-handedly say something silly, and Kankri would have a momentary giggle, then the Taurus would feel like God himself had graced him with those few, adorable seconds. Seeing his friend smile and be merry instead of acting like a grump was incredibly rewarding.

In his own, odd way, Kankri also had his degree of silliness. If the mohawked teen paid enough attention, he could catch the Cancer throwing his own, little inside-jokes into his speech. Most of the time, it wasn’t funny enough to elicit a laugh, but it could be both amusing and endearing. Nobody could argue that Kankri wasn’t wordy, but Rufioh could give a rebuttal if they said he was boring. Well, yeah, okay, his /lectures/ were boring, but not him as a person.

They began sitting nearer each other in the few classes they shared, chatting occasionally. Instead of sitting formally across from the other at the dining table during study sessions, it became more comfortable to sit on the couch, and after that to just sprawl on Rufioh’s bed. Well, it would have been more comfortable if it weren’t for the fact that all of Rufioh’s plushies and figurines, with their beady little eyes lifelessly staring, made Kankri feel a little disconcerted if he thought about them too long. Sometimes, if the latino wasn’t paying attention, the shorter male would reach over and turn some of the plushies so that they were facing the other way. There, much better than having Pikachu’s merciless gaze bore into him like it was processing every single one of his sins.

On one occasion, feeling mischievous, the Taurus, not looking up from what he was typing on his laptop, surreptitiously gave his friend a tiny kick. Either Kankri hadn’t noticed, or he’d thought it was merely an accident. Rufioh jabbed him again, still typing. The Cancer shifted his gaze away from his book, eyes narrowed. He watched the taller boy kick him a third time. That little shit. “Have you talked to your Doctor about your muscle spasms recently?”

Another kick. “I’ve got no idea what you’re talkin’ about, man.” He was grinning, but Kankri couldn’t see it as he was facing away from the diminutive teen.  
Kankri had a younger brother, so he already knew how this petulant game went –yet he couldn’t resist; he kicked back.

“You tryna’ to start somethin’?” He twisted so he could see the Cancer’s face.

“Are you asking me if I quarrel, sir?” Kankri replied.

“… I guess that’s what I’m askin’ if you wan’na go all Shakespeare on my ass, yeah.”

“I resent the implication of me ‘going Shakespeare’ on your ass, or anyone’s ass, for that matter –whatever that phrase even is intended to mean.”

Rufioh chuckled. “Not like… literally on my ass, dude.”

“And who, might I inquire, is your ‘Ass-Dude?’ I mean, not to pry into your business, I’m just a bit concerned for you, is all.” The Cancer shot back at him, eyebrows arched in a highly scandalous fashion.

That elicited another laugh from the mohawked teen. “You’re fuckin’ ridiculous.”

Kankri couldn’t, of course, resist replying with yet more snark. “I also resent that; I don’t even know a Ridiculous. Are you telling lies, Rufioh?”

“Stoooopppp.”


End file.
